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Sizes 8 to 18 By Junior Maternity 1995 f/kft New York Chicago White Plains Cleveland Boston would land If he fell His driver, I saw when we had overtaken the truck and were passing it, was another Q.M.C. soldier. But we dId not over- take it until we had witnessed an ex- traordinary spectacle. There were a lot of jeeps on the road whose occupants had taken off, like us, à l'improviste, and as these vehicles passed the truck, the soldier up top would throw cases of K rations down into theIr rear seats. It was the war he did this that was remarkable The truck was going about forty miles an hour, and a Jeep would pull up on it, gOIng about forty- five. As it did so, the soldier, standing up there, facIng the rear-his feet spread wide apart to brace him on his gradually diminishing platform-would yell ((How many?" and the jeep driv- er would hold up one, two, or three fingers, usually three. The soldier would have the first case already in the air, leading the driver, who would instinctively hunch forward over the wheel. But the case would fall harmlessly behind him every time. The second would land right on top of it. The third might land a couple of inches farther back, ur even hit the stern end of the jeep and carom in, since by now the Q.M.C. bombardier would have to twist and throw it after the passing vehicle. These near mISSes must have pained him, for he was clearly a preci- sionist. He raised each successive case high above his head before he sent it crashing down, like an Old Black Jove hurling well-meant thunder- bolts I watched hIm until we had got our share, and then I turned my head and looked over my shoulder until we lost him from sight, some time afterward, and I never saw him conk anybody or thruw any groceries out into the road. The driver was good, too; he held the same even course and pace, like a well- trained circus horse. It was, of course, a wholly unauthorized distribution of Army supplIes, and maybe when that talented team reached the end of their run, some niggling Quartermaster lieu- tenant chewed them out because they were a few hundred cases short, but I would have given them the Legion of Merit. TheIr gesture was so lordly that when I heard our cases crash behind me on the floor of the Chevrolet, I mo- mentarily believed that they might con- tain fresh caviar, écrevisses à la nage, and a covey of smoked partridges. I remember no other incident between Bagnolès-de-I'Orne and Chartres, a journey that, as the Carte -,-Michelin reminds me now is about a hundred and sixty kilometres, or a hun- dred miles. All the way to Chartres, we accepted our hot tip at its face value and assumed that we were going straight through into Paris that nIght. I recall the excitement of seeing the first stone road markers that gave the distance not only to Alençon and Chartres but to Paris. The excitement increased as the number of kilometres decreased. When we reached Chartres, we were nearly two-thirds of the way from Bagnoles to Paris and we had a couple of hours of daylight left, but there we were held up. Army was mov- ing divisions from north to south and south to north, passing them through each other like a dealer giving cards a fast shuffle-the kind of passe-passe that IS a good G-3's delight and that it sometimes seemed to me the boys did just for the hell of it. To Roach and me, it was like being caught on the wrong side of a St. Patrick's Day parade. Then, in the mixed crowd of soldiers and civil- ians that was packed around the princi- pal carrefour of the city, half a dozen blocks from the Cathedral, I noticed a small private, first class, gesticulating and running toward us. As he ap- proached, I saw he was Allan Morri- son, a soldier-reporter for the Stars f.:J Stripes, who has since hecome New Yark edItor of the picture magazine Ebony, an ameliorated Amerafrican verSIon of Life. He was the diag- nostician who first di- vined the reason for the protracted resistance of the fort at Saint-Malo "The C.O. is loaded," he said. "When he fin- ishes his last bottle of sauce, they'll run up a white flag." Morrison was hitchhiking, so I beck- oned him aboard, and he climbed over the side and perched on our stack of K rations. A moment later, I recognized the lieutenant colonel who was out in the middle of the carrefour directing traffic, and I was able to surmise, cor- rectly, that the shuffling of troops was not being run off in strict accordance with standard practice. The lIeutenant colonel was a 1 st Division fellow named Chuck Horner and he was letting an endless column of his own people through; the only trucks that were mov- ing were full of 1 st Division soldiers This was an old 1 st Division trick. The M.P.s were supposed to handle such matters, but those assigned to the task ......